Ludwig Benjamin

Ludwig Benjamin (born September 2, 1855 , † December 21, 1945 in Hamburg ) was a German shipbuilding engineer who has made a name for himself in the field of ship stability .

Life

Benjamin was born in 1855 to Jewish parents and, after attending school and starting training, went to Great Britain to further develop his skills, where he became one of the few German members of the Institution of Naval Architects in 1884 . His first lecture in this society on a new method of calculating stability using a sham metacenter was criticized by Edward James Reed , but shortly afterwards Reed recognized Benjamin's new calculation method in his book The Stability of Ships , published in 1885, as a sign of remarkable qualification and ingenuity. The introduction of the sham metacenter at the intersection of the lift vector with the ship's center simplified the representation and calculation of the stability at larger heel angles .

After his time in Great Britain, Benjamin settled in Hamburg as a civil engineer. In 1907 he became a member of the Shipbuilding Society , where he gave a lecture on the capsizing of ships when they were launched. Such a capsizing process in 1883 during a launch at the William Denny and Brothers shipyard in Dumbarton had led to increased research into righting lever curves in various operating states. Benjamin's lecture attracted undreamt-of attention when the Principessa Jolanda capsized in September 1907. Further contributions on the stability of ships aimed at the introduction of uniform minimum requirements for ship stability and the research of rolling vibrations - which were later implemented. Although Benjamin did not belong to the Jewish denomination, he was excluded from the Shipbuilding Society in 1936 due to a changed statute that only allowed "Aryan members". Benjamin was exempt from deportation due to his non-Jewish wife until the end of the Third Reich and died on December 21, 1945 in Hamburg.

Fonts (selection)

• Contribution to the Solution of the Problem of Stability , Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects, Vol. 25, London 1884
• The capsizing of the ships when launching , Yearbook of the Shipbuilding Society . 9th volume, Springer, Berlin 1908
• About the degree of stability of ships , Yearbook of the Shipbuilding Society. Volume 15, Springer, Berlin 1914
• About rolling vibrations of ships and their relationship to stability , Yearbook of the Shipbuilding Society. Volume 16, Springer, Berlin 1915

literature

• Shipbuilding Society: 100 Years Shipbuilding Society - Biographies on the History of Shipbuilding , Springer, Berlin, 1999, ISBN 3-540-64150-5 .